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A review by dinsdale
Bad Science by Ben Goldacre
2.0
I'm a fan of Ben Goldacre. I've heard him interviewed on a number of podcasts and he's always interesting and makes great points. I just did not connect at all with this audiobook, however. I was very familiar with most of the subject matter, as much of the material has been covered in depth on the podcast The Skeptic's Guide to the Universe. The book felt like a review and a lot of rehash.
The book attacks medical quackery, homeopathy, nutritionists, anti-vaxxers, and several other health-related and anti-science topics. A couple chapters I found interesting were about Brain Gym and statistics manipulation. Brain Gym is a brain training company which is apparently a bigger deal in the UK (I've never even heard of it) which Goldacre claims is bad science and he takes it down in a big way. The Andrew Wakefield / MMR vaccine scare is covered in depth in this book. The author does a great job presenting his case against lousy science in a concise and sometimes funny way.
Despite my rating, I would recommend this book for anyone looking to become more proficient in seeing through anti-science claims and recognizing scams and pseudoscience. If this subject matter is new to you, you will probably find this book enlightening. It was written in 2012 and the message is as important now as it was then. Maybe more so, actually.
The book attacks medical quackery, homeopathy, nutritionists, anti-vaxxers, and several other health-related and anti-science topics. A couple chapters I found interesting were about Brain Gym and statistics manipulation. Brain Gym is a brain training company which is apparently a bigger deal in the UK (I've never even heard of it) which Goldacre claims is bad science and he takes it down in a big way. The Andrew Wakefield / MMR vaccine scare is covered in depth in this book. The author does a great job presenting his case against lousy science in a concise and sometimes funny way.
Despite my rating, I would recommend this book for anyone looking to become more proficient in seeing through anti-science claims and recognizing scams and pseudoscience. If this subject matter is new to you, you will probably find this book enlightening. It was written in 2012 and the message is as important now as it was then. Maybe more so, actually.